The admission only adds to the administration’s black eye on the matter, as they had so loudly cheered the operation and continued to do so despite what is an almost impossibly long list of instances of things in the operation going wrong.

This is doubly problematic because the Obama Administration had declined to authorize the same raid in its last weeks, and a lot of the hype was around the Trump Administration trying to present themselves as more willing to act with the early operation and has nothing to show for it.